Music, dance, IT, trivia. Not necessarily in that order.

A guide to some 19th century repertoire for ballet class by Ethan Iverson

Air de Ballet is a guide to 19th century piano repertoire for ballet class by Ethan Iverson, who used to be music director for Mark Morris’s dance company, among other things. The page is richly illustrated with scores, audio recordings and useful commentary. Although you can play all kinds of repertoire for class, the 19th century dance tradition (waltz, polka, mazurka) provides the workable rhythmic framework for exercises, even if your tunes come from Maroon 5 and Ariana Grande.

My favourite creative tip from this page is the idea of improvising Czerny-esque etudes over the chord sequences of jazz standards (listen to his recording of Ain’t Misbehavin’ for an example). I’m also beginning to read some of the other articles on Iverson’s site, such as Mixed Meter Mysterium, a brilliant article on Stravinsky. Well worth stopping a while and browsing!

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Welcome to my new site

A blog about music, IT and dance some of the time, and eclectic personal trivia the rest of the time. I've moved here from www.jsmusic.org.uk, where the software was beginning to fall over, but don't worry, all the old stuff is still there if you're looking for it.
If you're another academic music/dance type, you might be interested in the conferences page, where I list conferences/seminars that I think I might go to (see under 'Pages you might like')